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Old 11-22-2006, 02:08 PM   #1
asilentmurmur
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OpenOffice vs Microsoft Office, which do you prefer and why?


Hey everyone. Which of the following 2 do you feel is superior to the other, and why?


OpenOffice 2.0.4 vs Microsoft Office 2003 (or 2005)
 
Old 11-22-2006, 02:15 PM   #2
b0uncer
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Let the flames begin!

MS Office is made with money, and a lot of people have it. It does many kinds of jobs, but in my opinion (and experience) it makes people go nuts too, quite easily even. It's become too user-friendly and too closed, plus it's way too expensive compared to what it actually is.

OO.org is nice, handles different formats, but it has some problems that MS Office has too; it can make you go nuts too, it won't co-operate with MS Office perfectly and so on..it's by far one of the best office suites on Linux and other platforms, especially compared to what it costs, but then again it's heavy. Ok, MS Office is heavy heavy heavy, but OO.org is heavy too. There are good alternatives around anyway.

For real database working I see other alternatives better than those of either Office packets - for word processing too, and for spreadsheet calculations also.

I prefer OO.org since it's working overall better than MS Office, causes less stress, it's easier to install and I don't have to mind licence fees if I install it. MS Office is nice since it's everywhere and I can laugh at people who tear their head off just because it just crashed, trashed all your documents and beeped happily ever after.

Try out Abiword, Gcalc and all the other alternatives - not to mention TeX/LaTeX, if you're into mathematics, nature sciences or technics. The choice between MS Office and OO.org is easy, if you don't have money, take the latter one. If you have money, you don't have to think - you can buy something real. Like a secretary to do the job and release yourself from tearing your own head off for a piece of paper.

Last edited by b0uncer; 11-22-2006 at 02:17 PM.
 
Old 11-22-2006, 02:17 PM   #3
Indiestory
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I dont really have any experience with the whole office package, but there are far too many problems with word to make it useable. None of the formating for pages and set tabs ever seem to work past the line you are working on. OOo writer works very well ,but it has none of the simplicity of word. The help function doesnt work or if it does it points to wrong articles of the paths for the article's dont work.

With that i still much prefer OOo, it has alot of use ful features such a word completion.

(note my OOo experience is using NeoOffice, im rather sure they are the same thing)
 
Old 11-22-2006, 02:19 PM   #4
nadroj
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well i dont use the whole office suite just word editing. i think all high-quality word processing programs like OO word (write?) and MS word are extremely annoying if you want to do anything but a simple document with no formatting. i use MS office, as i think it is better quality. if price was an issue i would think OO is a very good cost-wise solution.
i dont recall ever having either of them crashing.

edit: on my computer i have MS office and on my brothers i installed OO because i only had one license for MS office. the formatting issues are constant throughout the two, is my opinion. i would say in the end they are the same products just one is cheaper in price.

Last edited by nadroj; 11-22-2006 at 02:21 PM.
 
Old 11-22-2006, 02:20 PM   #5
asilentmurmur
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one thing ive noticed is this: When I would type up a document in OOo Writer and then open the same .doc document in Word, the text was all garbled and unaligned. Basically it would look like a mess. Do any of you know any way i can fix that?
 
Old 11-22-2006, 02:28 PM   #6
nadroj
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in OOo, if you saved the document as the proper format for your version of word (xp, 97, etc) it should open fine.
 
Old 11-22-2006, 04:01 PM   #7
Adrian Baker
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nadroj
in OOo, if you saved the document as the proper format for your version of word (xp, 97, etc) it should open fine.
Thanks for the tip - I didn't know that!

As to the question, I prefer and use OOo. It is far easier to use for almost everything. The formatting on Word drives me up the wall! I work in education and find that I can write an examination paper with questions, subsections, diagrams etc far easier in OOo than in Word. I love the whole OOo package and have no idea why anyone would want to spend £350 on an Office program when OOo is as good as (or better) than the opposition and is free! Saving in pdf format is so easy to.
 
Old 11-22-2006, 05:19 PM   #8
Indiestory
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nadroj
in OOo, if you saved the document as the proper format for your version of word (xp, 97, etc) it should open fine.
No it happened to me yesterday, saved in the (xp , 97 ,etc) all the formatting was lost between OOo and Word had to export to pdf to avoid the problem. Didnt look around ,but i doubt there is a fix. Word formatting is shite, if only OOo had its ease of use.
 
Old 11-22-2006, 05:36 PM   #9
charle97
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i like microsoft office better only because it's easier to program macros with vba than the arcane syntax OOo uses.
 
Old 11-22-2006, 05:38 PM   #10
nadroj
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indiestory i have MS Office on my computer and my brother has OOo. he writes fullly formatted documents, saves it in XP format .doc and i open it on my computer to print, as we dont have a network printer. there has never been a problem in loss of formatting, but everyones personal experience with software is different i guess, there are many factors.
 
Old 11-22-2006, 06:55 PM   #11
metalx1000
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I don't do a hold lot of work in any Office program. Mostly just writing letters and little spreadsheet. I have not come across anything that I would use that MS can do that OpenOffice can't. And if there are a few things that MS can do that OpenOffice can't I doubt it is worth the price.
 
Old 11-22-2006, 07:23 PM   #12
easuter
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I don't like being locked out of my own documents. The fact that MS does not support backward format compatability for its very old Office suits (ie: 95, 97, maybe 2000) simply to force a user to upgrade is outright extortion. this alone is a big turn-off.
Besides, openoffice does everything i need from a office productivity environment, its free (in both senses of the word), and it has not failed once to open ANY version of MS format documents.
TBH, i don't miss ms-office one bit
 
Old 11-23-2006, 08:44 AM   #13
Hangdog42
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Indiestory
(note my OOo experience is using NeoOffice, im rather sure they are the same thing)
You might want to explore this a bit more. The Mac users in our company have all moved to the X11 version of OOo and away from NeoOffice due to bugs. NeoOffice is pretty close, but OOo works a bit cleaner as long as you can put up with running X11 apps on your Mac.

I've been using OOo for over a year as the core office suite for our business. The part we all like best is that it really doesn't matter what OS other users are running, you can easily exchange documents. Considering that we have Mac, Windows and Linux users, that is not a small value to us.

Exchanging documents with others has worked flawlessly about 95% of the time. The times it doesn't work are usually complex Word forms. Since we don't run a lot of complicated spreadsheets, Excel/Calc compatibility hasn't been much of an issue. What has impressed me most however is Impress's ability to handle PowerPoint presentations. I've loaded up some pretty complicated PowerPoint files and they have worked very well. When I've given presentations, usually nobody notices that I'm not using PowerPoint. I'm taking that as a good sign. When I'm setting up, sometimes people will see it isn't PowerPoint and ask about it. They usually are interested when I tell them it's OOo, and are usually impressed after the presentation is done.

Oddly, the thing I miss most from MS Office is the envelope printing wizard. If OOo had one, I would never need Office again.
 
Old 11-23-2006, 09:00 AM   #14
b0uncer
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Quote:
one thing ive noticed is this: When I would type up a document in OOo Writer and then open the same .doc document in Word, the text was all garbled and unaligned. Basically it would look like a mess. Do any of you know any way i can fix that?
Well, apart from using the correct file type, if you created a document in Word97 and tried to open it with Word 2000, you might end up with a garbled document too -- MS Office is far from standards, when it comes to different versions The funny thing is, the very same doc opens perfectly in OO.org 2. Of course there are situations which are the opposite, but it's just annoyingly funny to see that even Word can't open it's "own" docs, if they're not created with exactly the same program you're trying to read them with (and sometimes not even then).

I don't get why Office was simpler than OO.org, I've used both (MS Office from it's first days till XP's, and OO.org before it became OO.org till today) and I don't see any big differencies. If you've messed the help up, it's your own achievment, I didn't and I don't think I did anything odd for that my word won't display any helps since it asks for install cd if I try to open help, it asks for the goddamn cd for every other action I'm trying to do. And a week ago it just suddenly died and I had to remove, reboot, reinstall, reboot and re-try to get it back running. Funny, eh?
 
Old 11-23-2006, 09:19 AM   #15
vharishankar
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Both Office programs have their limitations. In actuality I prefer not to use any Wordprocessor for large documentation and prefer LaTeX.

I use a Wordprocessor only for quick n dirty stuff like disposable letters and I don't really think it makes much of a difference whether you use MS Office or OO.org

On the other hand, if you do plan to write large, maintained documents in an Office program like Word or OpenOffice writer, I think it's a good idea to use the built in features like Headings, Styles and other document structure elements and don't randomly apply visual formatting all over the place.

All formatting in the document should be controlled by the style manager and you should never have to use the font-changing and other formatting options directly on the document text. That way a word processor can also be used to maintain good documentation.

It's how you use these tools that determines the quality of the final output.

Last edited by vharishankar; 11-23-2006 at 09:20 AM.
 
  


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